If you are invited to take photos of tigers in Savage Kingdom, be cautious

If you are invited to take photos of tigers in Savage Kingdom, be cautious

Glorida Johnson and T.J., a 2-year-old tiger who weighs 450 pounds, bask in the afternoon sun at Savage Kingdom. Columnist Mark Hinson had already walked (backwards) to the house while this picture was being taken.

When Yann Martel's excellent novel "Life of Pi" came out in 2001, it took 100 or so pages before it was cleverly revealed that a teenage survivor of a shipwreck in the ocean had climbed onto a lifeboat that was secretly occupied by a live tiger.

That certainly made you want to read the rest of the book to see how the trip ended.

The previews for the movie version of "Life of Pi" spoiled the surprise by boldly advertising that there was a tiger on the lifeboat. So did the lobby posters and the press campaign. The floating tiger was everywhere. I'm surprised director Ang Lee didn't rename the movie "There Is A Flippin' Tiger In The Gawldurn Life Boat, Y'all."

With all the tiger hype going on, it is no surprise that I flashed back to my close encounters with some very big striped kitties.

In the summer of 2001, my wife Amy and I were invited by Gloria Johnson to visit Savage Kingdom.

Savage Kingdom is in Center Hill, which is plopped down in the swampy bellybutton of Florida, south of Ocala, but very far from any hill. It is 56 miles east of the Magic Kingdom.

Johnson is a striking and outgoing woman who could pass for Bo Derek's sister. She raises large cats. We're not talking Maine Coons, either. We're talking cougars, pumas and tigers. She was working as a volunteer with Savage Kingdom Rare Feline Breeding Center, which is essentially a stud farm for tigers and other exotic big cats.

Earlier that summer, one of the tigers had given birth to four white tiger cubs. Gloria needed extra help controlling the quartet during a photography session, so we signed on as tiger cub-wranglers.

"We're sending a Christmas card to Siegfried & Roy," Johnson said. "They may be interested in buying another white tiger for their act in Las Vegas."

Keep in mind, this was two years before a trained tiger named Montecore mauled and nearly killed Roy Horn onstage during a performance at the Mirage casino and hotel on the Vegas strip.

If you work around tigers long enough, that kind of thing is bound to happen.

The first photo session

Amy and I, who are not morning people, got up before dawn one Saturday in July and drove our Honda Civic named Wheezer for more than three hours into the middle of Sumter County. Center Hill was once known as The Green Bean Capital of the World.

We knew we had arrived at the right place when we saw signs over the hurricane fence and gate that read: "PLEASE DO NOT FEED YOUR FINGERS TO THE TIGERS." "NO VISITORS." "DANGER: ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK."

Hmmmmm. What exactly are they trying to say?

The 45-acre Savage Kingdom was more of a Savage Compound. There was a ranch-style house, which appeared to be built in the early '50s, that served as the headquarters. It was surrounded by large oak trees draped in Spanish Moss.

The oak-lined backyard, which was much larger than a football field, was a maze of wire cages and animal runs. They held an assortment of felines - snow leopards, bobcats, pumas, leopards and, of course, lots and lots of tigers.

In zoos, the animals are kept behind bars and inside habitats that are not easily accessible to visitors. At Savage Kingdom, you could walk right up to the cage and stand inches from the predators. We were allowed to wander around, on our own, while the photographer, Mark Wallheiser, set up up his equipment.

Panthers and tigers are a lot like your typical house cats. They huff and purr. They rub their jowls on corners. They roll over and present their bellies for pets. They are seductive little (bleeps). If you ask me, it is all an elaborate attempt to lure you into putting your hand in the cage and drawing back a bloody stump.

"Do not feed your fingers to kitties, do not feed your fingers to kitties," I kept telling Amy, who was also equally smitten with the lethal kittens.

"I want to get a picture of the big Siberian tiger," Amy said. "You distract him at that end of the cage, while I stick the camera lens through the wires on this end."

The tiger's name was Tijek. He weighed 550 pounds and none of it appeared to be fat. The circumference of his head was much larger than one of the tires on Wheezer. Tijek stared at me with a look that let me know I was as insignificant as a gnat.

Amy crouched down close to the ground at the other of the cage, which was about 50 feet long.

"Get him to look over here," Amy said and waved one hand in the air.

Before I could get the words, "Look out, Amy!" out of my mouth, Tijek bolted to the other end of the run and roared in Amy's face. She fell over backwards, the camera flying high in the air.

"I don't think he likes having his picture taken," I said to Amy as I helped her up from the ground. "I haven't seen anything move that fast since my brother Robert cleaned out the all-you-can-eat fried chicken buffet at The Water Wheel Restaurant."

"Will you pluck the grass and leaves out of my hair, please," Amy said as the color returned to her ashen face.

If you hang around tigers long enough, that kind of thing is bound to happen.

The second photo session

When we returned to the ranch house, we met Robert Baudy, the Frenchman who owned Savage Kingdom. It was not even close to noon and the temperature was already above 90 degrees. Baudy (pronounced boo-dee) was wearing short sleeves. His forearms were covered in scars, divots and old claw marks. The flesh looked like freshly pounded cube steak.

"How did you get all of those scars?" I asked.

"Jaguars," he said in his French accent, which made it sound like he said 'zag wars.' "You can do nothing with jaguars."

"Good to know," I said.

While Wallheiser and Johnson prepared for the arrival of the baby tigers, Baudy and I discussed various amusement parks that have exotic animals on display for the public. Baudy had disdain for them.

One park in Florida, according to Baudy, bought cheetahs and brought them to the swamps before realizing the desert-dwelling animals could not breathe the humid air without contracting a lethal fungus. Another park's animal-wrangler transported an elephant in a rented U-Haul truck. Let's just say he didn't get his damage deposit back.

"They once bought hippos and put them in a faux river that had a concrete bed," Baudy said. "The hippos drowned because they could not crawl out of the river. Hippos don't have claws."

"Good to know," I said.

Baby tigers, however, do have claws.

"Here, hold this baby tiger," Johnson said to me as she handed me one of the models.

The first thing you notice about a baby tiger is that it is not squishy and fluffy. It's like holding a gigantic canned ham. A ham that keeps twisting, swatting and wriggling.

The second thing you notice about a baby tiger is that it is not quiet. It let out a high-pitched distress call that sounded like a cross between a leaky gas valve and that hideous lamb-baby in David Lynch's "Eraserhead." The rest of the large cats in the compound heard the kitty's complaints and began to bellow and roar. I was holding the dinner bell and I was dinner.

"Here take this angry kitty off my hands," I said and placed it in a large cage that was perched a few feet off the ground.

Johnson and Amy climbed into the cage with the tiny, blue-eyed tigers and tried to arrange a background of neatly wrapped Christmas presents and wooden nutcrackers. The feline models kept screaming and squirming. The props went everywhere.

There is a cliche that involves herding cats and the same goes for tigers. I am pretty sure a photo shoot with Janis Joplin, Lindsay Lohan and Marilyn Monroe - when all three were on their worst behavior - would have gone much smoother.

While the shoot dragged on, I wandered a few yards away and watched as another volunteer named Vincent Lowe hosed out a tiger cage. The cage's occupant, T.J., a 450-pound yellow tiger who was sired by Tijek, was having a blast playing in the stream of water. T.J. bounced around like a kitten playing with string. It looked like fun.

Ten days later, Lowe was killed by Tijek when he was making repairs on the animal's cage. Lowe, who was wearing a pistol, had time to close the gate and toss the weapon to a co-worker, who survived. Baudy shot Tijek on the spot.

If you work around tigers long enough, that kind of thing is bound to happen.

The final photo session

After the Christmas card portrait was completed, Johnson decided to take one of the tigers out for a walk.

She put T.J., which she had been helping raise since it was a cub, on a leash, as you would a very large Labrador Retriever. She held a tiny riding crop that she used to pop the tiger on the side if the beast started wandering off course. They walked into an open field and we, for reasons I'm still not sure of, followed.

Wallheiser, who wanted to get photos of the lady walking her 450-pound tiger, was messing with his camera equipment. He handed me a reflector screen to hold while he adjusted his camera. The light hit the reflector and that caught the eye of the tiger.

Some witnesses who were in the audience that day at the Mirage when Roy was pounced on say that the light bounced off some jewelry that a lady was wearing in the front row. That was the trigger that set Montecore off. Cats attack shiny things. Even if they are tigers living in the desert of Nevada.

"Put that reflector down now and back off," Johnson said.

I did not need to be told twice. Then I turned around and began to walk back to Baudy's house.

"Never turn your back on a tiger," Johnson said.

"You know, a little mini-Miss Manners course in tiger decorum might have been nice before I came trotting out here in the middle of this open field," I wanted to say, but I kept my big mouth shut for once in my life.

I turned around. Johnson and T.J. were about 35 feet away. She had smartly re-directed the tiger's attention to something else. I started walking backwards in an open field in Center Hill and praying to every deity I could remember.

If you hang around tigers long enough, that kind of thing is bound to happen.

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If you are invited to take photos of tigers in Savage Kingdom, be cautious

When Yann Martel's excellent novel 'Life of Pi' came out in 2001, it took 100 or so pages before it was cleverly revealed that a teenage survivor of a shipwreck in the ocean had climbed onto a